By now, all their spring offensives having failed, the Germans had pulled back to the Hindenburg Line. Their morale was suffering from a reduction in rations and from discontent in the ranks. Much of this was fanned by former prisoners of the Russians who had been infected by Bolshevik propaganda before being repatriated and sent to units of the Western Front. The men were aware that their relatives at home were not far off starving; the ‘Kaiser’s offensive’ which was to win the war had manifestly failed; the British were attacking as if the war had only just begun; and now a seemingly inexhaustible supply of American manpower was flooding into Europe.
The Allied plan for the next stage was for the British to continue attacking on the Somme and in Flanders, and even the Belgians, supported by French and British divisions, would go on the offensive. Additionally the British, French and Americans were to mount a major offensive further south: the British would go north in the direction of Valenciennes, the Americans would attack up the valley of the River Meuse and through the Argonne Forest, and the French would hold to the east of the Meuse and attack west of the Argonne in the Aisne valley. The aim was to close all exits from France and defeat the German army before it could withdraw into its own territory.
There were still two American divisions – 27 and 30 – with the British at Saint-Quentin (where they were very useful in clearing the canal tunnels) and two – 2 and 56 – with the French. Otherwise, fifteen American divisions – seven from Saint-Mihiel, three from the Vosges, three from Soissons, one from Bar-le-Duc and one from a training area in the interior – had to be moved to their jump-off positions, ready to begin the new offensive on 26 September. The move began on the 20th. In six days the Americans had to move 428,000 men with their guns, tanks, stores and ammunition forty-eight miles across a network of very bad roads. Fourteen trains a day were needed for artillery ammunition alone, to be delivered to twenty-four depots. The quartermasters needed nine depots, the engineers twelve; there were eight depots for water, six for chemical-warfare equipment (gas and smoke) and nine for petrol, oil and lubricants. Forage for 90,000 horses and mules had to be pre-dumped, thirty-four casualty clearing stations established and 164 miles of light railway built. It was a prodigious and nearly impossible task; but the Americans managed it, overseen by a bright young star of the staff, Colonel George C. Marshall (who would be Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in the next war).
Zero hour was 0520 on 26 September, and the First Army attacked with three corps in line: I Corps (Hunter Liggett) on the left, Cameron’s V Corps in the centre and Bullard’s III Corps on the right. They were supported by nearly 4,000 guns, about 1,500 of them French, and the astonishing total of 40,000 tons of shells. The 1st Tank Brigade, of French tanks with mixed crews, was now commanded by Patton, still looking as if he had stepped out of a tailor’s catalogue. There was a thick mist, but each infantry company was accompanied by an engineer officer or NCO with a compass. In general the German infantry made a show of resistance and then withdrew, except for the machine-gun detachments which held their ground and fought it out. In the centre, and a Day-One objective for V Corps, was the hill of Montfaucon. The plan was for 79 Division to go right (east), 91 Division to go left, and 37 Division (the Maryland and Virginia National Guard) to assault frontally. The men plodded five miles through the woods in heavy rain, and by late afternoon were around the slopes of the hill but could not get through the wire obstacles, which were stoutly defended. By this time virtually all of the tanks had been knocked out by German artillery and the crews were in comfortable ditches brewing coffee, no doubt speculating that for them the war – or at least this part of it – was over. Patton would have none of it. He toured bushes, ditches and houses, digging out the crews with his swagger stick, and then led them in a brave but hopeless attack on foot against Montfaucon. Patton was wounded and carried off the field. ‘At least I’ll get my DSC [Distinguished Service Cross],’ he was heard to gasp. He did. Next morning the hill was taken by 37 Division in a first-light assault.
By 3 October the Americans had advanced ten miles, but now the offensive ground to a halt as roads became clogged and supplies and artillery could not be moved forward. Foch and Haig were disappointed, but it was not the Americans’ fault – they were experiencing their Somme, though they were luckier in the quality of the enemy they faced. Pershing brought up more troops and created the Second American Army. Hunter Liggett was given command of the First Army and Bullard of the Second. By the end of the month, advancing more slowly now, the Americans had gained another five miles. Meanwhile, on 27 September the British had stormed the Hindenburg Line and by 5 October they were through the last portion of it. Simultaneously the Belgians and British swept out of Diksmuide and Ypres and drove the Germans back. By the end of October the British Third and Fourth Armies were over the River Selle. The French were moving more slowly, but all along the line the Allies and the Americans were advancing and the Germans retreating; now it was a question of following up a beaten German army, for peace was in the air.
On 6 October, as the German army began to crumble, the new Imperial Chancellor of Germany, Prince Max of Baden, asked President Wilson for an armistice on the basis of his Fourteen Points. When it was clear that neither the Allies nor the United States would negotiate with what was in effect a military dictatorship, Ludendorff resigned as Chief of Staff, being replaced by General Wilhelm Groener. At the end of October there was a mutiny in the German High Seas Fleet, which refused to sally out against the British for what the Kaiser and the admirals hoped would be a last glorious act of defiance. At the same time morale in the German army was at an all-time low, with some soldiers refusing to obey orders and a surge in desertions. At home there were riots in the streets and revolution, stirred by Communists, extreme socialists and advocates of stopping the war at any cost, broke out. Between 7 and 11 November a German civilian delegation (the army refused to take part) negotiated the terms of an armistice with Foch (a marshal since August that year).
All three commanders-in-chief, Pétain, Haig and Pershing, were asked for their views on the terms to be offered. An armistice is not a surrender, but merely a pause in the conduct of war, and all three were anxious to ensure that the armistice terms would put them in an advantageous position should the armistice not lead to a peace. Haig’s suggested terms were the most generous – he thought that the German army still had some fight left in it and that the German government should be made an offer it could not refuse; the French, understandably for historical and geographical reasons, were in favour of harsher conditions. Perhaps surprisingly, Pershing was the lion of the three, wanting terms that would make it impossible for the Germans to resume hostilities. Although Haig was inclined towards leniency, he was concerned that the German army had been defeated not on German soil but inside territory that they had invaded, and that the German army was to be allowed to march home, the men with their rifles and the officers with their swords. This, he felt (as did Pershing), could give rise to a myth of military victory thrown away by political chicanery; and in due course the ‘stab in the back’ legend did indeed arise. In the event the French won, and Pershing’s demands were watered down by Wilson. The Kaiser abdicated on 9 November 1918, and the armistice came into effect at 11 a.m. on the 11th. The war was formally ended by the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919.
Once they had entered the war, the greatest service rendered by the Americans to the Allied cause was the message they sent to Germany: that a huge and so far untapped reservoir of manpower was willing, and would in due course be able, to take the field. Had the war gone on into 1919, as most French, British and American politicians and generals thought it would, the Americans would have had between eighty and 100 large divisions in France, a force larger than the combined armies of France and Britain. Germany could not possibly have held out against this swelling of the Allied ranks; it was that knowledge, combined with the hammering suffered by the German army at Passchendaele, that
led Ludendorff to launch the 1918 offensive, a decision that lost Germany the war. The American army was inexperienced; its staff procedures were rudimentary at times and, as with the British when they first attempted to launch a mass army into the attack, its tactics were unsophisticated. When it finally engaged in operations as the First Army it was up against troops who were long past their best, but the Americans cannot be slighted for that. Their men fought with great gallantry and, increasingly, with skill. Pershing never had a chance to show whether or not he was a great commander: the war ended too soon. He was inclined to play his cards too close to his chest; he did not delegate enough, and tried to control every aspect of the AEF himself, which no one man could possibly do; he did not always appreciate other people’s problems – particularly those of the War Department back in the United States – and he could never be accused of being tactful. For all that, he was an inspiring personality who largely succeeded in walking the treacherous tightrope between being a good military ally and adhering to the policies of his Commander-in-Chief, President Wilson.
While America’s main role in the war was in the message her declaration and subsequent appearance in Europe sent to Germany, her military actions were not without cost. The American army had 204,000 battle casualties on the Western Front, of whom 53,000 were killed. There was an uneven spread: of the forty-three American divisions in France, the most affected were 1 and 2 Divisions, which had 2,996 killed and 17,324 wounded and 5,155 killed and 18,080 wounded respectively. Taking relative divisional strengths into account, this compares with the casualties of British divisions on the Somme. There were 591 killed in 93 Division, which arrived in March 1918, and 182 in 92 Division which arrived in June 1918. Nobody at all was killed in 8, 31, 34, 38, 39, 40, 76, 84, 86 and 87 Divisions. In addition to battle deaths the Americans lost around 30,000 dead from disease and accidents. Few died as a result of gassing, but the influenza epidemic hit them especially hard. No Americans were executed as a result of sentences passed by courts martial for military offences on the Western Front, but ten soldiers were executed for civil offences (rape carried the death penalty). While the American death toll could more easily be absorbed by the population of the United States than could far higher totals by the smaller populations of France and Britain, these deaths were significant to America because it was the first time she had sent a mass army to a foreign war. It is a sadness, and unfair, that her contribution to the war on the Western Front has been all but forgotten – even in America.
The First World War marked America’s emergence onto the world stage. It was her first step towards becoming a superpower, but that status was to be delayed until another war a generation later. Having approved the Armistice and signed the Treaty of Versailles, President Wilson returned home. In 1919, however, there was a new Congress with a Republican majority, and it did not agree with the terms to which Wilson had subscribed. In particular it objected to collective security agreements (which might drag America into another war), and to the establishment of the League of Nations which had been agreed at Versailles. The United States did not ratify the Versailles treaty, but negotiated a separate peace with Germany. Wilson, worn out by his efforts to get the treaty accepted in America, fell ill and was unable to campaign for the 1920 presidential election.31 It was won by a Republican, Warren G. Harding, and Wilson retired to Washington, where he died in 1924.32 America reverted to isolationism – understandable for a country that can survive perfectly well without intercourse with foreign states – and would not reap her true destiny until after the next great world conflict in 1945.
NOTES
1 Some might say that the scars of the Civil War are not yet healed. The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Britain’s West Point, once had an American lecturer on the academic staff. He was the obvious choice to teach the American Civil War, which is of great interest to the British army. Problems arose when it was discovered that he was teaching ‘The War of Northern Aggression’.
2 Colin Nicholson, The Longman Companion to the First World War, Pearson Education, Edinburgh, 2002.
3 Robert Blake (ed.), The Private Papers of Douglas Haig, Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1952.
4 The practice probably began with the colonial militia, and continued during the Civil War when local notables who raised regiments were given the rank of colonel, even though they may not have actually taken the field. Afterwards the rank was often conferred by state governors, generally in the South, on members of their staff or on prominent citizens. It is really not very different from our own practice of conferring knighthoods, so we British should not sneer at it too much.
5 I am grateful to Professor Hunt Tooley, of Austin College Texas, for his explanation of the origins of House’s rank.
6 Jane Plotke, WWI Document Archive, http://www.lib.byu.edu, 1996.
7 It was never going to happen, although the Kaiser did once suggest it to King Edward VII. England was not interested in large-scale conquest on land; her concern was control of the seas to protect her trade and the security of the empire.
8 Although ninety American pilots transferred from the Escadrille to the American army, which was a tremendous bonus.
9 At that time officers of the US army could serve until retirement at the age of sixty-five (on three-quarters pay), and hardly any were promoted above the substantive rank of major (which saved Congress money). In the pre-1914 British army majors retired at forty-seven if not selected for promotion, and lieutenant colonels and colonels at fifty-two.
10 For British readers, Marie-Joseph-Paul-Roch-Yves-Gilbert Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), was a French general who fought on the American side in the Revolutionary Wars (1774–1783), when their Frenchmen beat our Germans.
11 Apart from the Korean War, which was technically a UN operation but in practice an American one, American soldiers have never donned the blue beret of the UN, nor have they been happy to place their troops under command of anyone other than an American. The Commander-in-Chief of NATO is always an American. Currently it is most unlikely that the US will agree to the provisions of the proposed International War Crimes agreement, which will allow soldiers to be hauled before courts not of their own nation. The British, being wetter in such matters, have indicated that they will agree, thus making the British army no longer responsible for its own discipline. Good for the USA, say I.
12 Except that there were not half a million American troops available for the 1917 offensive, and that number would not be in Europe until May 1918.
13 General John J. Pershing, My Experiences in the First World War, F. A. Stokes, New York, 1931.
14 Ibid.
15 Quoted in Donald Smythe, Pershing, General of the Armies, Indiana University Press, 1986.
16 Ibid.
17 American soldiers still prefer British field rations to their own. In the Gulf War the going rate for an American camp bed (superior to the British version) was three British composite ration packs.
18 The American navy is still completely dry, the America army virtually so, and completely dry when in the field. When training with American troops this author found instant popularity through always being armed with several bottles of Gurkha rum.
19 An American division had two brigades, each of two regiments. A regiment had three battalions and a machine-gun company. A battalion had four companies each of four platoons. Each platoon had fifty-eight men divided into seven squads (sections). By now a British division had nine battalions, compared to the American twelve larger ones.
20 Blake (ed.), The Private Papers of Douglas Haig, Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1952.
21 The nickname ‘doughboy’ is thought to date from the American involvement along the Rio Grande in Texas, when the white dust adhering to their uniforms led to their being compared to bakers.
22 An American battalion was commanded by a major. The executive officer – exec – was a cross between the second-in-command and the operations officer in the modern British ar
my.
23 The US Marines continued to wear a stock long after the army had abandoned that item of uniform, hence ‘leathernecks’.
24 Ibid.
25 US Army Center of Military History, The United States Army in the World War, 1917–1919, Vol. 5, 1988–92.
26 Ibid., Vol. 3.
27 Ibid.
28 Blake (ed.), The Private Papers of Douglas Haig, Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1952.
29 Ibid.
30 It is unkind to remind the RAF that they were formed on 1 April 1918.
31 At that time a President was not yet limited by statute to two terms.
32 Harding died in 1923, before completing his term and just before the administration became embroiled in the ‘Teapot Dome’ scandal, in which land containing naval oil reserves was corruptly leased to private commercial interests.
14
EPILOGUE
The Great War did not, of course, end war. No war ever does, and in any case the cry was a politician’s, not a soldier’s. The Versailles Treaty of 1919 gave Alsace and Lorraine back to France; but the fact that the numerous memorials to Prussian regiments scattered across Alsace have escaped defacement, even after 1945, may indicate that the inhabitants had not necessarily been unhappy as Germans. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was annulled, and an independent Poland came into being. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed and Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were born. The German High Seas Fleet was interned at Scapa Flow, where its crews scuttled their ships in a last gesture of defiance. Germany lost her colonies, and was required to admit war guilt and pay a huge indemnity; her army was reduced to 100,000 men, she was allowed no aircraft or submarines, and she was to abolish the Great General Staff. French and British troops occupied parts of Germany. In Russia, despite Allied and American military intervention, the Bolsheviks consolidated their hold on the country and the world’s first Communist state was established. The League of Nations was set up to implement collective security measures that would make the waging of aggressive war everlastingly impossible.
Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military) Page 46
